Trapped

POSTCARD, DETROIT MICHIGAN
Early 1960s

When I was the age of a kindergartner
I stood on my suburban porch
And watched the flames and smoke
Along the horizon
As rioters burned Detroit
But it didn’t reach my world until
We tried to drive to my grandparents’
And the expressway was closed
With little pots that looked like cartoon bombs
Little round black pots with tongues of fire
Across all the expressway ramps
To keep people out I thought
But no my father said
To keep those people in
And then I was scared
For me and the people on the other side
Many years later
I stood in my office tower
And watched the flames and smoke
As the World Trade Center burned
They closed the bridges
And the tunnels to Manhattan
And shut the airports to the nation
And this time
I was the one trapped inside

The Attic Dwellers

ST BERNARD PARISH, LOUISIANA
October 2005

We heard the rumors in New Orleans
About the people still living in attics
Months after the flood waters had receded
Cramped and stifled under the battered eaves
Of their houses while the mold rapidly grew
Up the trashed and torn walls below
And the paint outside peeled wherever
The foul sandblasted water had rushed against it
Some would come down at night
Creeping through the debris
Like the feral cats and dogs
The only ones alive in the inky dark
When the roadblocks were closed at dusk
In the day neighbors would bring them
Food and water and maybe talk to them
Trying to coax them out into the world
But mostly it seemed they were greeted with silence
The attic dwellers preferring the safety
Of the thin roof that protected them
From the wind-driven bullets of rain
And the fragile floor that held them still
A life raft above the death below